


Reynir's story

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [11]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21562831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: Reynir tells Mikkel how he came to be in the crate.
Series: Mikkel's Story [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Kudos: 10





	Reynir's story

"Hello!!? Help!!! We're out of food again!" Sigrun shouted into the radio.

"W-what? They didn't drop off the supplies?" That sounded like Torbjörn, Mikkel thought.

"One crate filled with garbage food! And a second one mostly filled with a **person** who is going to eat **all of it!** "

"Uh – but – oh. No. Nono nooo! What is this? Why is this happening to us?!" The voice over the radio wailed. Mikkel shook his head in amazement at the man's self-centeredness. "Just – just hold on! We'll call someone! If it's a civilian I'm sure anything possible will be done to get them to safety as soon as possible!" Mikkel sighed and turned away. He knew very well that there _was_ nothing possible to rescue the stranger, any more than there was to rescue the team. He left Sigrun and Tuuri to deal with the radio while he tried to sort out the situation with their ... well, call him their guest.

The situation in the sleeping quarters was every bit as bad as Mikkel had feared. Emil was ostentatiously standing guard while the stranger cowered, bewildered, on the floor. Completely baffled by the situation and frightened by all the shouting, Lalli had climbed into Sigrun's bunk, the very top bunk, and was peeking fearfully over the edge. With a sigh, Mikkel started with Emil.

"The prisoner is under control," Emil announced in his best military voice.

"He's _still not_ our prisoner," Mikkel stated as simply and clearly as he could.

"Wait ... did you say he's _not_ a prisoner now?"

"As I said before: NOT a prisoner. No. N-O!"

"Why – why didn't anyone _tell_ me?" Emil wailed. "I wouldn't have acted this way! We're mortal enemies now!"

There was nothing much Mikkel could do about his distress, so he turned to the Icelander in an effort to straighten things out and, of course, to find out what the young man was doing in the crate in the first place. "So you were trying to get to Bornholm, were you?" he asked politely, as a way to break the ice.

"Ah, yeah. It's a funny story actually. I –"

"Thank you, there's no need for that," Mikkel interrupted. "I only came to see how you're coping with staying here."

"Oh, no, they'll notice I'm gone soon. They'll send someone for me."

"They won't," Mikkel answered bluntly. The other needed to understand his situation as quickly as possible, with no false hope.

"What?"

"I doubt you're immune." That was a safe bet with any Icelander. "There's no system in place for retrieving possibly exposed civilians such as yourself from high risk areas. Merely arranging for a quarantine vessel to be sent here would take weeks."

"But... but...," the younger man stammered.

"The final verdict," Mikkel went on remorselessly, "will surely be that we're in charge of you until our mission is complete and we can all be safely extracted in accordance with proper protocol."

The stowaway collapsed in despair. That wasn't the response Mikkel wanted, so he tried to make a better connection with him: "What about that funny story of yours?"

"It's not funny anymore. It's stupid. _I'm_ stupid. I just ... I just wanted to ... to visit a foreign country. Just once." He sighed deeply. "Like my older brothers and sisters do. They have the _best jobs_ , and get to travel everywhere all the time! They're all immune, because my parents took part in the Dagrenning program when they had them. But not stupid me!" He lowered his voice to mutter, "I was probably a mistake."

Mikkel knitted his brows in puzzlement. He knew of the Dagrenning program: harvesting eggs from immune women, fertilizing them _in vitro_ with sperm from immune men, and implanting the resulting embryos in the wombs of non-immune women on the theory that the surrogate mothers would feel greater attachment to babies they had given birth to than to babies they had adopted. Like most non-Icelanders, he considered it a foolish waste of resources, but the Icelanders were the wealthiest people alive and could indulge themselves. Even so, a family that could afford at least _four_ Dagrenning children must be extremely wealthy or extremely powerful, and so what was their son doing hiding in a crate?

"They barely ever visit home, a couple times a year maybe, but when they do, they always have the coolest things to tell! As a kid I _loved_ the stories, but after a while they only made me realize just how boring my life was. Really, really _boring!_ And I didn't even have the option to leave, because of that dumb ban on non-immune people travelling internationally!"

Now Mikkel was frowning in earnest. During the decades when Iceland cut itself off from the rest of the world, the other four surviving nations had established their own trading arrangements, and, given their limited populations, they were forced to allow non-immunes to participate. They had worked out reasonable quarantine procedures so that there had not been a single outbreak caused by trade after the first decade or so. But when the Icelanders came out of their island fastness, they largely took over trade due to their much larger population (three times that of all the others put together) and their greater wealth, and they were therefore able to impose their own paranoid restrictions on non-immunes. But that was the one policy that the other nations _had_ , finally, been able to get them to reverse. Mikkel liked to think that the General had had a hand in that.

"At least, that's what I thought. That's what Mom and Dad told me. But then my brother told me that I could leave any time I wanted to because the ban was lifted, oh, years ago! And ... that means they lied to me." He shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. "I guess they wanted at least one of us to stay at home. That's what my brother said, anyway. I understand, I mean, if we were all in danger all the time ..."

Rubbing his jaw in a seemingly thoughtful pose allowed Mikkel to conceal an incipient smile. The boy's parents lied to him for years? Suddenly Mikkel thought there was a good explanation for four or more "Dagrenning" children.

"Well, anyway, the military for sure wouldn't take me; they weren't about to take a non-immune, but my brother said that a trade ship might, though he said I should just go to Reykjavik instead of going abroad. Of course someone who's _been_ abroad would say that! After that I planned my escape, packed my things, and _left_! I didn't care what my parents thought!" His expression as he said that spoke louder than his words as to his regrets.

"I caught the stagecoach to Reykjavik and it was awesome! I'd never been more excited in my whole life! Well, Reykjavik was pretty neat I suppose." His expressive face showed his disappointment. "But there was no time for sight-seeing! I had to get down to the docks and find a ship going somewhere even neater! There was only one ship leaving that day, but it was going to Bornholm! In Denmark! The most southern place in the whole world! Sun and warmth and colorful flowers and palm trees! Whatever palm trees are," he added uncertainly.

Hiding his smile was getting more difficult for Mikkel. Bornholm was home and he loved it, but the other's excitement was — well, if he _had_ made it to Bornholm, he would have been profoundly disappointed. If they got out of the Silent World alive, Mikkel could try to take him to Bornholm to see the family farm. His mother's garden did have colorful flowers, in season, even if it had no palm trees.

"At first they didn't want to hire me onto the ship. They said they were fully staffed so I said I'd work for nothing, just to get experience, you know. So they said they'd take me on to do kitchen stuff like washing dishes. I could barely believe how easy it all was! The very first ship I tried accepted me on board!"

Mikkel thought the crew had seen him coming and taken advantage of his naiveté to get free work.

"Only then the cook told me that they didn't have a license to let anyone ashore in Denmark. They just unload in the harbour and head back out, and I couldn't go ashore _at all_ , not even though we'd be quarantined going back to Iceland. So ... I thought that was it. I surrendered to the boring work and the thought of going back home again to face my mom and dad ... and then these guys came in and they said they were unloading two crates. I thought we were there already even though it seemed like the trip was shorter than they told me, and ... well, it seemed like such a good idea at the time to just ... just ... just hide in a crate and go ashore. I'm really sorry I took out all those cans of tuna. There's still some left though ... and so I thought they'd find me when they opened the crates in Denmark and then they'd be mad at me, but I really didn't hurt anything ... and you know what happened next."

Mikkel shook his head in amazement at the boy's innocence and foolishness. If he _had_ made it to Denmark inside a crate, he'd have arrived on their quarantine island, been slapped immediately into quarantine, and been shipped home to Iceland on the next ship that would take him, never having seen Bornholm. That would very likely have ensured that he would never be permitted to set foot on another ship. But it was pointless to bring that up now.

"I'm really sorry," Reynir ventured, "I promise I won't eat a lot. And if you need help washing dishes or anything ..."

"It's quite all right. I'm capable of working around situations such as these." Mikkel had never actually been in a situation quite like this, but there had to be something he could do. "And in a worst case scenario, we can always eat you."

"That's ... fair, I suppose," the younger man answered, looking dolefully at his feet as Mikkel departed to see what he could do in the radio room.


End file.
